Victoria Crowned Pigeon

Genetic work has placed the dodo firmly within the pigeon family, with the Nicobar pigeon as its closest living relative and the crowned pigeons of New Guinea also within the same subfamily, Raphinae. The dodo was, in the phrase that surprises people most reliably, a very large flightless pigeon.

That makes the Victoria crowned pigeon more than a curiosity. It is a large, ground-dwelling, slow-breeding pigeon on tropical islands, unafraid of people, laying a single egg at a time. Every one of those traits appears in the account of why the dodo disappeared within about 64 years of European arrival on Mauritius. The crowned pigeon retains flight, which is a real difference — it can escape upward. But its life history offers no more capacity to absorb losses than the dodo's did, and the pressures on it are hunting and forest clearance rather than introduced rats. The resemblance is close enough to be worth stating plainly rather than treating as a novelty.

Island environments frequently produce large-bodied forms of otherwise ordinary animals, and New Guinea's crowned pigeons are a clear case. With few ground predators historically, a heavy terrestrial bird was viable, and three Goura species evolved at a size no continental pigeon reaches.

The Victoria crowned pigeon spends most of its time walking, foraging for fallen fruit — figs especially — along with seeds and the occasional invertebrate. It flies reluctantly and usually only upward, to a roosting branch or away from a disturbance. Pairs and small groups forage together, and the birds are notably quiet apart from a deep booming call and a sharp wing clap given in display. Both parents incubate the single egg and both feed the chick on crop milk, a nutrient-rich secretion of the crop lining produced by males and females alike — a trait almost unique to pigeons among birds.

Two pressures, both straightforward. The bird is hunted for meat, and it is exceptionally easy to hunt: large, ground-dwelling, slow to flush and — as observers consistently record — not much bothered by people approaching. It is also taken for its crest plumes, which are used in traditional dress. Hunting has removed it from areas near settlements and along logging roads, so its distribution is increasingly patchy within a range that still looks continuous on a map.

The second pressure is habitat. Northern New Guinea's lowland forest is being logged and converted to oil palm, and this is a lowland species with no montane refuge to retreat into. A single egg per clutch means slow replacement, so local populations that are hunted out do not readily refill. Its Near Threatened listing places it one category away from Vulnerable, and the trend is downward.